It all started because of Christmas cookies.

       I met her on Christmas Eve, two years ago. I’d already known that that year’s Christmas was going to be different, and of course I ended up being right about that, but not for the reasons I’d been thinking. See, my mom had died that year. It was going to be my first Christmas without her, and my first Christmas alone. I’d expected it to be weird and depressing, but it turned out to be only about half as depressing and definitely at least twice as weird. I guess this story really starts at nightfall. . . .

       I decided it was truly “Christmas Eve” when daylight stopped coming through the windows. And it dawned on me that I was truly going to spend this supposedly special night all by myself for the first time ever, and my stomach felt strange. Alone on Christmas. How pathetic. I hadn’t even been able get myself invited to a drunken college kid party to drown my loneliness. Come to think of it, all the kids were probably at home with their families, and I didn’t have that option anymore.

       If my mom had been alive, I’d have been at a party. Maybe drunk, maybe not, but definitely around people. My mom had always had a lot of friends, never at a loss for someone to invite or be invited by. I on the other hand had never been a popular kid, and I evolved into a not-exactly-well-liked adolescent and finally a not-very-social early-twenties guy. I mostly liked being alone, but around Christmas, I’d liked being invited back to my mom’s house for the holidays. She’d host these parties with her friends and I’d be in this weird Christmas happy place. It was, I don’t know, kind of like some other world or something.

       I felt lonely, but I also felt stupid for feeling lonely at the same time. Part of me wanted to be lonely because it was a way of sort of honoring my mother, acknowledging her hole in my life. But part of me wanted to get my mind off it. So I compromised. I took out a photo album.

       Christmas three years in the past. Most of the pictures had been taken by her best friend, and I was always hanging around my mom so I was in a lot of pictures too. Always smiling, always caught up in the moment. Presents, decorations, and seasonally-appropriate snacks and drinks surrounded us. A plate of Mom’s awesome cookies was right there by my elbow in the past. Me with my biting-my-lip grin, sharing a smile with her.

       Another album was mostly other stuff but it had Christmas photos in the back from two years before. Us with her friends again. It was always her friends who were like her family. But they must not consider me family or I’d have been invited this year too. My mother had been the link. We didn’t really have other family. My father had never been part of our world and our other relatives were distant in both miles and sentiments. So there we were again, with her friends and her cookies.

       Those damn cookies.

       I didn’t have any pictures from the previous year’s Christmas so I just thought about it. And I found that the cookies kept entering my head.

       She always made the same recipe, and it was exclusive to Christmas. And I never actually saw her preparing them; they just were there, or fresh out of the oven. It was part of their magic; I’d noticed the phenomenon as a child, and carried it with me into adulthood, where most magic things can’t survive.

       I missed her cookies.

       I lay there on the couch with two pillows under my head, staring at the ceiling and trying to think about her. But the thought of the cookies kept invading my mind. I could almost smell them. Why couldn’t they leave me alone to think about my mother like I wanted to?

       The urge to eat Christmas cookies suddenly became overwhelming.

       Oh god, I would have done anything to have those cookies right then.

       I wanted those moments back, and they were linked to that taste.

       I jumped up and hopped into my computer chair, pulling up my browser and punching up “Christmas cookies” on a search engine. Of course I got millions of hits, and as I glanced at them I felt a sense of hopelessness gnawing into my gut. It would be pointless to make or buy just any kind of Christmas cookies, because it had to be those ones, and how was I to know which recipe would yield the taste I craved? How could I ever re-create that Christmas cookie sensation when the only person who knew about it was gone?

       I felt like such a moron, but the idea that I would never taste those cookies again brought tears to my eyes, even though thinking about my mom almost constantly for the last few days hadn’t even come close to making me cry.

       A stupid silent prayer slipped into my thoughts before I could stop it:

       Please, God, let me have those cookies for Christmas.

       Immediately I felt idiotic. Next thing I knew I would be writing my wish in a letter to Santa in red crayon, or sending out a call to the Christmas cookie fairy.

       “Amen,” I muttered to the empty apartment, and then I hopped onto the couch again and nestled unhappily into my pillows. Soon I was asleep.

       A knock at my door woke me up. It also pissed me off, because I was dreaming of those cookies and it was the middle of the night on Christmas Eve and who the hell would be calling on my lonely ass right now? Who?

       “Who is it?” I yelled.

       Only another knock answered. It was insistent enough to be some burly lumberjack, or perhaps a pizza guy. Was it a prank? Was someone at the wrong address?

       I growled and put my feet on the rug. “Who the hell is it?”

       The answering voice was female, which surprised me. But the words that female voice uttered were even more surprising.

       “It’s the Christmas cookie fairy, who do you think?”

       Okay, what?

       So, my first thought was something like, All right, I don’t know any girls who would come to my apartment in the middle of the night in the cold on Christmas Eve for any reason. But seriously, I didn’t really even know any girls. I wasn’t dating anyone and I’d been too mopey (with good reason) this year to really keep up with my acquaintances or try making any new friends, female or male. So who was at my door? And what crazy coincidence could have her talking about Christmas cookies?

       Not knowing what to expect but admittedly intrigued because it was a girl, I undid the chain and opened the door, half expecting that this chick really would be holding some of my mom’s cookies, which she would give to me before flying back to Heaven. That wasn’t what I saw, but honestly, what I did see was just about as surprising.

       This girl, I mean, she was beautiful.

       I think I have to describe her in detail to give justice to exactly how pretty she was, and to really make it clear how long I stood there staring at her. I’ll try to really capture my first impression. Let’s see if I can get this right.

       She literally looked like a piece of living fantasy art, like a mix of everything I’d ever admired about women all rolled up in one person. She had these big shiny eyes that looked sort of exotic because they tilted up at the corners, and when I say her eyes were ice blue, I mean they really kind of looked like they were made of ice. It was one of those colors you notice instantly. Some people you might know for years without really noticing their eye color, but I was sure everyone who’d ever met this girl would remember she had bright blue eyes; I could see it even in the dark. And they had these almost comically long eyelashes on them, like a costume or a cartoon. Her nose was hardly a nose at all because it was more like this jaunty little bump that turned up at the end, and her lips were, you know, that perfect rosebud pink, pursed like a rosebud too.

       Her face was weirdly smooth, but not in a plastic, scary way—more like if a girl could live to be a teenager and still have the skin of a baby. And this cherubic face with its pointy little chin and its model-caliber cheekbones was framed by a whole mess of wispy white-blonde hair. I’m not exaggerating when I say “mess,” either—it was pretty windblown and scattered-looking, all different lengths with some sparse bangs in the front, the tattered ends trickling down a little past her shoulders. But that disheveled careless look only made her seem more enchanted, like she’d been riding the wind to get to my house and hadn’t brushed her hair before knocking . . . and after all, why would she? She was so stunningly gorgeous that she sure didn’t need to fix herself up for anyone. I was sure she knew it, too, and that any guy would melt for her just by taking one look.

       And speaking of one look, I’m sure I was taking more than that, but for a few moments she tolerated it, like she understood why I was doing it. She was maybe half a head shorter than me—which put her at about five foot seven—so she stood with her head set at an attractive upturned angle to meet my gaze. As beautiful as her face was, I broke our eye contact for a little glance down at her body, and after noticing that she was small-boned and too slim for obvious curves but in her own way perfect, I realized she wasn’t wearing any shoes or pants, and came out of my trance. She had to be freezing.

       “It’s kind of cold out here,” the girl said, echoing my thoughts. She had this voice like, I don’t know, a music box . . . it had this enchanted quality to it that I’d never, ever heard in an actual speaking voice before. “Could you please let me in now?”

       “Uh.” It wasn’t an answer, but of course I stepped aside to let this pixie thing into my rathole bachelor pad, and that was all the answer she needed. She walked on in without further explanation and sat down on the couch where I’d just been sleeping, letting out a pleased-sounding sigh as she realized there was plenty of body heat left in the cushions to claim.

       So my next thought was about what I should do next. All my first thoughts were on doing things for this girl, like getting her a drink or asking her if she wanted some socks or something. I mean, she wasn’t wearing anything on her bottom half, just this long shapeless dress thing that didn’t even come to her knees, and some big coat that obviously wasn’t for a female. I wanted to ask if she wanted any food, or if I could get her a blanket or some chocolate or a wedding ring, you know? But that seemed weird if I didn’t even know who she was, and she should expect me to ask who she was, right?

       I’d be weird if I was automatically cool with having a random girl in my apartment, right?

       So I settled on some words that didn’t sound too psycho. “Hi. So, um, who are you?”

       She blinked at me. “I’m not really sure,” she said. “I thought you would know.” She looked away and didn’t say anything else.

       Ohhkay.

       “Sorry, I don’t know you, uh, ma’am.”

       She looked back at me. Those eyes, looking at me.

       “Why did you come to my place?” I asked, and she looked like she was going to be upset, so I continued quickly. “I don’t mind—I mean, I can try to help you or whatever—but why’d you pick me?”

       She brightened, which brightened up the room. “I have a Christmas card for you.”

       I thought she was kidding until she pulled an envelope out of one of her big coat pockets and handed it to me. There was no address or anything on the outside, but just “THOMAS” in big block letters.

       I stared at it for a second, then looked back at her. “How’d you know this was for me?”

       “Because I wrote it, the card’s from me.”

       “But how do you know my name?”

       “Because it was on the card.”

       What the hell? I sensed that she wasn’t going to give up answers easily, so I just opened the envelope. Inside was a Christmas card with a photo of an inviting fireplace on it, featuring a plate of cookies and a glass of milk, apparently left for Santa. On the inside it just had some printed text: “HOPE YOUR HOLIDAY SEASON IS FULL OF WARMTH AND JOY.” I noticed she hadn’t signed it or put in a personal message. It was just the card.

       I took a deep breath, put the card on my table next to an all-purpose one I’d gotten from my boss, and crossed the room in three steps to sit on the couch beside the girl.

       I didn’t care if I was being rude or weird. I took her hands gently and held onto them. And then I said, point blank, “What’s going on?”

       Because I’m not some stupid fool in a fairy tale who goes along with all the weird stuff without questioning it.

       “I don’t really know what’s going on,” she said, “but I have a feeling we should be making some cookies.”

       I let go of her hands tentatively. “I don’t know what this is about,” I said, “and it is really, really freaking me out. So. If you would please just tell me why you wandered into my house and suggested we make cookies, I would feel a lot better.”

       “I don’t know why we should make cookies, but I know we should. And I don’t know a lot right now, so I think we should stick to what I do know.”

       “Why don’t you know anything? What happened to you?”

       “Well, let’s talk about it while we walk to the store and get the stuff we’ll need.”

       “What?”

       “Would you lend me some pants? And some shoes or something?”

       I just didn’t know how to deal with this anymore except to go along with it, so I put her in a pair of my sweatpants and some boots that rattled around her skinny feet. I brought my wallet and a coat, and then there I was, walking to the grocery store with this girl I’d never met.

       God, she was beautiful in the moonlight.

       And what’s especially weird is I didn’t want to kiss her or anything—her beauty was something other than sexually attractive (even though to tell you the truth it was that too). If someone had asked me whether I wanted to kiss this girl or make out with her or whatever, I would have said yes in a heartbeat—like hell yeah!—but honestly no desire really rose in me when I looked at her. Just sort of a state of awe, like she was something majestic and definitely something I shouldn’t spoil or violate. Something sacred. And something otherworldly, but down-to-earth and human too.

       It struck me to realize she’d already known we’d be walking, even though it wasn’t such a short walk and most people would have assumed I had a car to drive us there. Why did she seem to automatically know stuff about me, and what else did she know?

       “Um, excuse me,” I said, since I didn’t know her name and since “hey” sounded kind of barbaric. “To put it bluntly, you seem to know me. But I don’t know you. Have we met?”

       “I guess I’m your Christmas present.”

       “What’s that supposed to mean?”

       “I exist because of you. Because you needed someone. So everything I am so far is stuff you want me to be or expect me to be. And that’s all I know.”

       My mind didn’t really know how to deal with that, because either she was batshit or I would be batshit for believing her.

       But she also radiated this sort of “I’m-disturbed-about-what-I-just-said” honesty, like she wasn’t laying it on thick to try to charm me before she ran away with my wallet, and then she shrugged like she was at a loss for words too.

       “You exist because of me,” I said, slowly.

       “Yes.”

       “You’re saying you were sent to me for some purpose, huh?”

       “More like I think you created me.”

       I laughed. “Yeah, well, I’m not God.”

       “Doesn’t matter.” She looked up at me as we walked. “I think I can prove it to you, or at least give you some good reasons.”

       “Try me.”

       “Let’s start with my outside, since there’s not much else right now. Don’t I look just like you’d think a Christmas fairy should?”

       “I have never heard of a Christmas fairy,” I said, skirting the question.

       “No, not literally. I just don’t know what else to call myself, and neither do you, so right now, I’m your fairy. I’m too young to be your fairy godmother, and I’d rather not be your fairy godsister or something in case we end up doing stuff sisters and brothers shouldn’t, so let’s just call me something and get that over with.”

       “You’re a lot snippier than I imagined fairies would be,” I said honestly, still sort of dazed at the suggestion that she might be willing to do any sort of “stuff” with me.

       “Maybe I’m just pissed off because I don’t know who I am yet, except defining myself in terms of you, and then you won’t even let me talk to you.”

       “Jeez, by all means, keep explaining.”

       “So I look the right way, right?”

       I took another look at her, because I could steal a long glance in response to that kind of prompt. And when I was done I said, “I honestly don’t know what a fairy is supposed to look like. But yeah, you’re definitely easy on the eyes.”

       “Of course. In the stories, the ugly ones are evil.”

       “Ohhkay.”

       “I’m not just pretty, though,” she went on. “This is something else I know. I’m, like, all your favorite types of pretty, put together. I’ve got the eyes from the romantic movies and the wind-swept blonde hair and the kissable lips and the silly innocent face. All the stuff that’s your special take on ‘beautiful.’” She tilted her head. “Does it look kind of funny all put together, though?”

       “Um, not really,” I said, still mentally stumbling and attempting not to fall into a whirlpool of weirdness.

       “Well, then, I guess I have the right package for you, to be your perfect idea of a girl. Now I just have to do some other stuff to make you happy and then maybe I’ll feel like I served my purpose.”

       “You have to do nice things for me to serve your purpose?”

       “Yes. Like making your mom’s cookies.”

       Oh god. What the hell.

       “I guess I’m supposed to believe you have the recipe, then?”

       “If you need me to have it, then it’s going to be in my head when I need it. Just like I had everything I needed to find you when I came.”

       I was thinking, Holy crap, she came to make me cookies. God. If she was supposed embody what I really wanted, why hadn’t she come as my mother? If this was a dream, why couldn’t my subconscious at least give me that?

       “When we get to the store, I’ll know where to go and what to get, because fairies just know things,” she said. She sounded like she doubted it herself. It was kind of funny. Something struck me then, something about how she’d said she was the way she was because I expected her to be. There was a hole in her logic.

       “You know, I always thought fairies had wings, actually.”

       She didn’t miss a beat. “Well then maybe I do.”

       “Very funny.”

       She seemed to be in deep thought for a moment, then brightened again. “Thomas, you’re right, I do have wings.”

       “Sure you do.”

       “Yup.”

       I looked her up and down. “Well I don’t see any wings.”

       “That’s because they’re under my coat.”

       “And you didn’t know they were there until I mentioned it?”

       “I guess not. I didn’t have a reason to think, ‘gee, I wonder if I have wings’ until you said something.”

       “Seems to me like something you’d have noticed, though.”

       She shrugged. “It’s going to take me a while to notice everything. My whole self is new.”

       “I still think wings would be kind of hard to miss.” I was thinking, What kind of game is she playing? “Forgive me if I think you’re making it up.” How convenient that they were completely hidden under the coat, right?

       “Well, do you believe I have a heart?”

       “A heart?”

       “Yes. Because I just noticed I can feel my heartbeat, just like I can feel that I have wings just like I have arms and legs and cold little toes. But I hope I don’t have to cut open my chest for you to believe there’s a heart in there.” She looked at me. “I need you to believe in everything about me.”

       “Everyone alive has a heart. But you’re the only person alive I’ve met who’s claiming she has wings.”

       “Well, I guess you’ll see them when I’m warm enough to take my coat off. It’s way too cold for me to take it off now, and you’d better not ask me to either.”

       “I wasn’t going to ask you to do that.”

       “But you wanted to.”

       I didn’t bother to argue with her.

       We walked into the twenty-four-hour grocery store and I followed my supposed Christmas fairy around as she threw flour, sugar, butter, vanilla extract, eggs, and baking soda into our basket. When she put something I’d never heard of called “apple cider vinegar” into the cart, I gave her a look.

       “What?” she asked in response.

       “Why are you buying vinegar?”

       “Because it’s in the cookies.”

       “I didn’t think vinegar could be in cookies.”

       “Well, I think it is.”

       Then she grabbed a big mixing bowl and some measuring spoons and cups.

       “How’d you know I don’t already have baking stuff?” I asked.

       She just gave me a look, then she grabbed some tin foil. Which I was actually out of.

       “How’d you know I needed more tin foil?”

       “The same way I know you’ve got enough money to buy all this shit.”

       “I didn’t know fairies cussed.”

       “Maybe not, but you must not have thought they didn’t either. So I talk like you.”

       I didn’t ask how she knew I liked to swear, even though I didn’t remember swearing around her. Yet.

       We bought our stuff. For a minute I felt bad for the cashier having to work such a night, but then I noticed she was wearing a Jewish star necklace. Guess she didn’t really mind working on Christmas Eve if her family didn’t consider it a holiday. I wondered briefly if it annoyed Jewish people that everything closed up around the Christian holidays when they were just regular days for them. At least this grocery was open. Maybe their management was all other religions.

       Or maybe the people running the store didn’t have anyone to have Christmas with anyway. Like me.

       The fairy girl carried the eggs and I carried the rest. The walk home was pretty quiet. I think she said a couple things about cookies, and I think I wasn’t listening. When we got through the door we set down our stuff and the first thing she did was take off the big coat. So of course I had to look, and I saw what she was talking about. The girl had a rather small pair of wings folded behind her, though to be honest they looked like a child’s costume and they looked like they were attached to the weird garment she was wearing. Sort of like someone had cut rainbow dragonfly wings out of iridescent cellophane and sewn them on. I didn’t say anything. Mostly because it was obvious to me that they were fake wings and I didn’t know what to say to her about that, since she was so determined to make me think she was a fairy. After we were done taking everything out of the bags and tossing the plastic in the recycler, I collapsed on the couch, feeling pooped.

       “You look sleepy,” she said.

       “Yeah.”

       “Well maybe you should take a nap while I make the cookies.”

       I realized as I fell asleep that a good portion of my inability to process anything that was happening to me was because I was dead tired.

       When I woke up—to the smell of cookies—she was still there, and she was asleep at the table, her scattered hair tossed carelessly onto the table curling into some spilled flour. Her head was resting on her folded arms, turned toward me with her big eyes closed and her mouth just a little open so I could see her front teeth. She was breathing evenly, perched there with her knees together and her silly pretend wings squished up against the chair back, bent up at the bottoms.

       Beside her was a plate of Christmas cookies.

       They smelled and looked just like my mom’s. As I came toward her, I honestly wasn’t sure if I wanted to shove the cookies in my mouth or if I just wanted to touch her sleeping face. I didn’t have to make that decision, though, because she stirred and awoke as I stepped into the kitchen.

       “You’ve got to try them,” she said in greeting, standing up.

       “Okay,” I said numbly, and got to it. I wasn’t surprised that they tasted just like my mom’s, too, but I was surprised at my reaction. They didn’t make me want to cry, even though they did kind of make me sad. They just . . . made me feel like my mom was alive again, or alive somewhere, not totally gone . . . and I still had a remnant of her, or some connection. The cookies weren’t lost forever.

       “Just like Mom,” I murmured around crumbs.

       “I know,” she said sweetly. “My intuition for recipes seems to be intact.”

       “I meant more than just the cookies,” I said. “You. You did it like she did, out of my sight. The cookies are just here, and I never saw you making them.”

       “You can see the mess I made with the dishes,” she said jokingly. “I promise I didn’t wave a wand to make them.”

       “I hope not, because if you could do that, I’d rather not have had to pay for the ingredients and these mixing bowls and shit.”

       “Yeah, well.” She wandered into the living room and took my place on the couch. “I may be your Christmas fairy, but I’m not your slave. You’re on dish duty.”

       “Whatever. I’m on cookie eating duty too.” I shoved another one in my mouth.

       The girl yawned. “I want to sleep. Can I sleep here?”

       “I guess, if you want to.”

       “I have a question though . . . I have to ask for your permission for something.”

       “What?”

       “Today when I came, I knocked on your door to get in, because there were enough weird things for you to deal with. But I have a feeling I could get in without having to knock—if you’ll say it’s okay.”

       “What, you’re just going to appear in my house? Poof?”

       “I don’t know.” She blinked at me.

       Her silence bothered me, so I said, “Want a cookie?”

       “No.”

       More silence.

       “So can I?”

       “Can you come in without me letting you in?”

       “Yeah, that.”

       “I don’t know. I guess only you know that.”

       “But could I? May I?”

       “How can you ‘not know’ how you’re going to get in if you’re asking permission to do it?”

       “I don’t know that either. But maybe it’s part of the whole magic of it. The same way I made the cookies when you couldn’t see me do it. I’ll do it that way.”

       I started to feel really weird—I mean, physically weird—for the first time since her arrival. The hairs stood up on my arms. When they did that I couldn’t imagine why they hadn’t before. This whole thing was sooooo way creepy.

       “So what are you, a ghost? Or my imagination, or what?” I wanted to eat another cookie in case I was about to wake up, but the queasy feeling in my stomach said that wasn’t a good idea.

       “Thomas, let’s just say I’m your fairy, and leave it at that. Eat your cookies and play on your computer and let me sleep.” She flopped down face first onto my pillows. “And do your damn dishes before they start to stink.” For some reason her casual wording made me feel a whole lot less weird. I started to relax again.

       “Great,” I said. “I think for a few minutes that it sucks to be alone on Christmas, and God sends me a nagging housewife.”

       “Shut up.”

       “A nagging housewife who insults me and doesn’t do housework.”

       She made an exasperated sigh and opened her eyes just to roll them at me. God, she was so cute.

       “A nagging housewife who insults me and doesn’t do housework and has wings.”

       She seemed less exasperated this time when her eyes opened, but then she just glanced over her shoulder and looked at her wings. For a few moments she studied them with apparent interest. Then she turned away and looked forward again, holding her hand in front of her face. Looking at it with the same kind of interest.

       “What should I call you?” I asked. Her hand dropped and she looked at me.

       “Mmm. You get to pick.”

       “I think I’d rather you decide your name yourself.” I truly felt that. I really didn’t want to name her in case she didn’t like it.

       “I think it’s only fair you name me, because you made me up after all,” she teased. “But don’t name me something stupid, like ‘Angelina’ because you think I’m angelic, or ‘Trixie the Pixie’ or some bullshit. Pick a real name.”

       “Let’s compromise,” I said. “I’ll pick your name. You can pick a middle name for yourself. And if you end up deciding you don’t like what I choose, tough shit, it’s still your name, but you can go by your middle name instead.”

       She stared at me, a thoughtful look on her face. Eventually her eyes acquired an obvious glaze, and soon she was teetering on the edge of sleep. She made a soft whispery sound with her lips, and then her eyelids fell as she slipped into dreamland again.

       I was there in dreamland too, but awake, looking at her.

       I sat at the table eating cookies, pondering names for her and coming up with cheesy ones or things that made me uncomfortable, or just names that I liked except that I couldn’t see actually calling her by them. I was disturbed by a lot of what she’d done tonight, the things she’d known and the way she acted, but I was still too attached to the reality I’d known all my life to believe that this was really a creature I’d created out of the wish for companionship and cookies. I had to believe she was b.s.ing me or that she was some disturbed teenager with selective amnesia. She probably had her own name somewhere in her head. But nevertheless, even if I didn’t believe in her, I felt very sure that I wanted to help her. And maybe then someday I’d get the real story out of her about how she knew my mom’s recipe . . . and how she’d known I wanted them so bad.

       I wanted to hit the sack too, but before I did I approached her sleeping form and looked her over at close range. I still couldn’t tell whether the outfit she was wearing was supposed to be a really unflattering dress or if it was a long, thin shirt, but what interested me most was that I could see some very small stitching in rows alongside each of her thin plastic wings. It definitely looked like they were sewn onto her shirt. But as she breathed and the cloth went up and down, I noticed that actually the sewn lines stitched up long slits in the material like giant buttonholes, and the wings were sticking through the holes.

       They still didn’t look real at all to me, but I didn’t get why she’d take such pains to wear them under the shirt and then alter the garment so she could stick them through. Maybe because otherwise the straps holding them up would be obvious. I didn’t know. And suddenly I didn’t much care. I had a little bout of anger that came from nowhere, thinking, Who is this girl to screw around with me about my mom and pretend to be a fairy? . . . but I decided that feeling was about as irrational as this whole night, and decided to sleep on it.

       Maybe I’d dream up something to call her.

       In the morning she had disappeared, though she had left plenty of remnants of herself behind. The cookies—and their dishes—were still in the kitchen, complete with spilled flour on the table and carelessly strewn butter wrappers and eggshells. The cookie plate had been carefully wrapped in tin foil so the cookies wouldn’t get stale, but other than that she’d obviously decided her job was complete once the cookies had been made. I had a big mess to clean up while moping around alone on Christmas morning.

       I went ahead and straightened up so that I could immediately mess everything up again by cooking myself a Christmas breakfast. As I prepared my eggs and sausage, I thought about the girl and wondered where she was. I started feeling a little strange as I recalled the short time I’d spent with her, and I noticed I had this weird magical feeling bubbling through me. Maybe it was because it was Christmas and even adults’ heads get filled with visions of sugar plums during the holidays, but I found myself mostly believing that the girl really had been a fairy, and that some Christmas magic had really happened to me.

       I thought to myself, Well, I guess anything can happen, and proceeded to add a little extra food to my breakfast preparations. I set up a little plate with, I don’t know, girl-sized portions on it and placed it opposite my chair at the newly-wiped table. Then I whipped up a couple mugs of hot chocolate and sat down. I guess I was expecting her to materialize or at least just knock and join me, but after a while I had to admit my hunger was outweighing my patience, and I ate my food.

       “You gonna eat that?” I asked the air, pointing to the sausage on her plate.

       I sighed and stood up. I supposed that whatever magic had happened the night before, I couldn’t expect that it would come back and I couldn’t expect to bait her into returning.

       Though I have to say I do make a pretty good breakfast sausage.

       With a weird feeling of obligation I covered her plate with plastic wrap and stuck it in the fridge, thinking I’d offer it to her later, whenever she came back.

       Well why am I so sure she’ll be back at all? I asked myself.

       Then I remembered she’d implied there’d be a next time since she’d asked permission to come in unannounced.

       Weird.

       I made sure my door and windows were locked.

       I wanted her to come back, but I wanted her to knock like a human being. And I didn’t want her slipping in through a legitimate entrance while I was in the john and then pretending she’d phased through the wall or something, expecting me to believe it. My earlier feeling that maybe she’d been telling the truth had been swallowed up by a sort of glum, low-grade jadedness. If she was really a fairy, she should have known I was waiting for her and appeared when I wanted.

       All the food started to hit bottom and it made me drowsy, so I drifted off to sleep with my head on the couch’s arm.

       And when I woke up, lo and behold she was there again. And she was sitting on the couch with me, asleep leaning against my shoulder. That woke me up in a hurry.

       “Oh, god. Hey, good morning,” I said as she woke up from my movements.

       “Mmmm, hey,” she replied. She smiled sleepily, with her corn-silk hair strewn across her face and her eyes just open enough to reveal a peek of blue. I didn’t even think about what I was doing when I reached out and brushed her hair away from her face for her, tucking it behind her ears in a gesture that felt strangely intimate. She had kind of elfy ears, not really pointy but not really round either. Somehow they matched perfectly with her other slightly exotic features.

       “How long have you been here?” I asked.

       A yawn cracked her Chinese-doll beauty. “A li’l while,” she said, closing her eyes and hardly moving her lips.

       “I guess long enough,” I answered myself, realizing that she must have been asleep on me for at least a while since my arm had gone to sleep.

       She started giggling in this cute sleepy-girl way. I asked what she was laughing at.

       “We haven’t even known each other for twenty-four hours and we’re already sleeping together.”

       “You’re just dirty,” I said with a smile. Then I realized I should be a lot more shocked at her arrival since I knew I’d checked the door and windows. Why was I treating her apparently supernatural appearance in my apartment as if it was normal and natural? I stood up and backed away from her.

       “How’d you get in?” I demanded. “Tell me.”

       “Oh, crap, not this again,” she said, rolling her eyes.

       “Not what again?”

       “You. I can totally tell you like me and you want me to be here, but then there’s this part of you that pukes suspicion all over the rest of your attitude. I hate it when that happens because it makes you not want to believe in me.”

       “I just want to know how you got in my apartment. You owe me that.”

       She looked at her knees—they were bare, she was wearing the same thing as last night—and then looked up again. “I came into existence again, and this time it was inside.”

       “Came into existence. Okay. So you appeared here.”

       “I guess so. Last night when I came into existence it was outside, and I had to walk here. But you said I could just come straight here if I wanted.”

       “Well if you can appear and disappear whenever you want, I want to see you do it now.”

       The girl closed her eyes, and I couldn’t tell if it was because she was upset or because maybe she was trying to disappear.

       In any case, she stayed where she was, and her eyes opened. “Thomas, that’s the thing about magic. It happens out of your sight.”

       “That is bullshit. If magic exists, it can exist when I’m looking at it.”

       She was looking at me.

       I noticed there were tears in those eyes.

       Ordinarily I would have been ashamed of myself for making a girl cry—or really making anyone cry—but at that moment I was absolutely sure she was deliberately trying to mess with my mind, and I didn’t much care what she felt. Though to be honest the tears didn’t make me feel very good either.

       “Why are you crying?”

       “I’m not really,” she said, with her voice shaking a little. “I’m just frustrated. Because . . . I believe the same way you do, I believe you should be able to observe something if it’s real. But even knowing that I couldn’t do it with you watching.”

       “Couldn’t do what?”

       “Magic, I guess. Going away and coming back.”

       “Would it help if I turn my back?” I turned around. “Go on, do some magic, I’m not looking.”

       “I can’t,” she said, little more than a whisper. “I have to want to go away. And I don’t want to, I just got here. I want to be here with you.”

       I turned back around to face her with an exasperated sigh. “Never mind. To tell you the truth I was hoping you’d come too, and if you aren’t gonna tell me how you got in here but you aren’t gonna rob me, I guess for now it doesn’t matter.” I shrugged. “I’ll catch you at it sooner or later.”

       “You don’t get it, do you?” she said, standing up. “I’m not hiding some secret from you, but you’re treating me like I am. I’m telling you as much as I know, and let me just say it’s frustrating to know so little about myself! I’m still figuring it out, and that’s hard to do with you trying to grab the rope while I’m still trying to untie the knots in it.”

       “Look, as long as you’re honest with me, I don’t care what the truth is. As long as I hear it.” I bit my lip before saying the next sentence, because I felt like I was going to regret it, but I said it anyway. “I don’t want you playing any games with me. Whoever or whatever you really are, that’s okay with me, but don’t ask me to believe in magic you can’t show me.”

       “What about how I knew how to make your mom’s cookies? That was magic, and I showed you that.”

       “I don’t know how you knew the recipe or that I wanted them. And that’s brain-spinningly weird but it isn’t magic.”

       She made a huffing sound. “Well I can’t think of anything else to show you, except for me being here in front of you.”

       “That’s not magic either. I’m not talking about making cookies, I’m talking about flashy stuff that I can see. I’ll believe you when you transform into a cat or walk through a wall.”

       She looked so shocked and dismayed that I felt like I had to shave the edge off what I’d just said.

       “I don’t mean anything bad by it,” I offered. “I’m just not a sucker, and I don’t want to be taken for one. Don’t take it personally that I can’t do the faith thing. I still like you, at least as far as I can tell.”

       “I don’t know if you’d call it ‘faith,’” she said, “but I just want you to believe that I have a heart without me having to rip open my chest to show it to you, you know? I want your trust. I want to know my heartbeat is enough for you to believe there’s a heart.”

       “Look, all this shit about hearts is touching and belongs on a Valentine card, but like you said a minute ago, we’ve known each other for less than a day.” I put my hands out for emphasis, fingers spread. “I mean this in the best possible way, but why the hell should I trust you?”

       “Well maybe you should follow your feelings. Don’t I . . . feel right to you? I’m supposed to.” The expression on her face made it obvious that my opinion of her was really important.

       “You know, you do feel right—I like you.” I felt a little weird admitting what was going through my head, especially to someone I didn’t really know at all, but for some reason I felt like it was important, so I just let the words continue to fall out. “I feel kind of connected to you, but I have, like, a totally scientific kind of mind. So part of me says of course I feel connected to you, because I’m a guy and you’re pretty.” I shrugged. “It may be ugly but for a lot of guys it’s the truth. It’s never been my style to go with chicks just because I want to get in their pants, but the idea that that might be happening is easier for me to accept than the idea that you’re a fairy and I made you up.”

       “Okay, Thomas, see, I’m not asking you to shove all of science and reality up your ass. I just want you to believe your eyes and see that I’m real, and that I’m really what I’m telling you I am.”

       “Eyes lie. Hearts lie. So do girls.”

       “Ouch.” She took a deep breath, looked down, then re-met my eyes through a narrow-eyed glare that nevertheless gleamed with tears. “I understand what you’re saying. But I want you to . . . suspend your disbelief. For me. For now. Because your disbelief . . . it’s tearing me up.”

       By this time I felt horrible about making tears come out of her eyes, no matter what kind of messed up games she was playing with me, but my logical mind was in control, and I wasn’t going to let a little boo-hooing convince me of anything. “So every time I say I don’t believe, a fairy falls down dead somewhere?” I clapped my hands a couple times. “If you collapse, should I try that to bring you back to life?”

       “Do I look like Tinker freaking Bell?”

       “Okay, see, that’s what I mean. You’re saying you came into existence yesterday, and then you get pop culture references like Peter Pan. Somehow you still expect me to believe this psycho stuff you’re saying when you give me just as many reasons to disbelieve?”

       “I want you to believe,” she said, sitting down tentatively on the edge of the couch. “But if you can’t right now, maybe you could just . . . try to enjoy me.”

       “I have trouble doing that if I think you’re making shit up, or if I think you actually do believe this stuff and then I’m helping you be crazy. How can I just forget everything and ‘enjoy you’?”

       “I came here because you needed someone.” She wrapped her arms around herself, hugging her elbows. “I’m someone.”

       “I know. And really, you’re a very nice someone. But if you’re crazy or lying to me, neither of those things help me want to be around you. I can help, but I can’t just forget about wondering where you came from.”

       “Well, all I know is, you wanted someone, and you had some qualities picked out that were close to perfect.” Her eyes flicked up at me like she sought approval, and then she looked off to the side again. “You also had these ideas of . . . I don’t know, what magic would be in a human form.” She stood up again, turning toward me. “Everything else that you didn’t fill in with your imagination got copied from you. . . . ”

       The girl took a deep breath and kept going. “That’s why I talk like you, and know what you like, and understand your dumb references. Because I’m made from you and for you. Like Adam and Eve.” She dropped her hands beside her in fists like she was angry. “Why can’t you be happy when you’ve got exactly what you wanted?”

       “Because I can’t just believe that you’re what you say you are when I know my imagination can’t create a flesh and blood person.” She certainly was that. She was hugging herself again like she was cold, and her blood was coloring her cheeks.

       “Maybe I was somewhere wanting to be alive too, then,” she said, whispering. “But I needed you to define me, I guess. Or just someone, like you needed someone.” She grinned. “We’re each other’s someone.”

       “Okay, well. Like I said, I can help you if you’re in trouble. But tell you what. If you’ll agree to put aside being pissed off that I don’t believe in you, I’ll stop pestering you about where you came from and why. Maybe it’ll all come out in the wash sometime . . . but if you know me as well as you say, you should expect the way I’m acting. You should know how my mind works.”

       She swallowed. “I know. You’re not some fool in a fairy story.” She smiled at me. “And I’m not a dumb brainless storybook fairy all agape at the world, even if it is all new to me. I’m your kind of fairy.”

       “Ohhhkay then. How about I give you some breakfast. And then I’ll give you a name.”

       Her eyes lit up, which looked nice but was kind of scary too. Her eyes were so big and luminous that the way they caught the early-morning sun was sort of freaky-looking. I smiled anyway as she brought her cute little grin to the table and sat down expectantly.

       I re-warmed her breakfast and heated up her hot chocolate, and watched her look at it for a while. I wasn’t really paying attention to how long she sat there not eating because I was concentrating on what I was going to say when it came time to follow through with a name for her, but finally I noticed it had been a while and decided to say something.

       “Aren’t you hungry?” I asked.

       She sniffed. “Nope.”

       “Then why’d you look so happy when I mentioned breakfast?”

       “I was happy about the name.”

       “Oh.” I paused. “What’s wrong, something bad about the food?”

       “Nah, I don’t think so. I’m just not sure . . . if I need to eat.”

       “What’s that supposed to mean?”

       “I don’t seem to have any appetite, I guess I don’t really know what ‘hungry’ feels like, so maybe I don’t need to eat.” She made a funny little half-smile. “Being a magical creature and all, you know.”

       “You can’t eat?”

       “I know I can. Last night when I made cookies, I licked the bowl a little.” She bit her lip, but she still looked a little amused. “I wasn’t hungry then either, but I did it because it seemed like the right thing to do.”

       “Okay, whatever. I’m not going to force you to eat or anything. But you’ve got a body, and all bodies need nourishment. So you’d better feed yours if you expect to keep it.”

       She didn’t really seem too thrilled about it, but she didn’t say anything further and just took a sip of the hot chocolate. I was happy to see her lick her lips thoughtfully and try another sip, but she didn’t say anything about it and just put the mug down after that. It kind of disappointed me to see that she just stirred her sausage and eggs around on her plate, occasionally poking her finger into the grease and licking it. I sighed.

       “You don’t have to eat it. Look, I’ll take it, if you want something later just let me know.” She stayed silent as I slid the plate onto my side of the table and gobbled up everything on it in a matter of moments. She sipped a little more hot chocolate, with this attitude of “I’m doing this to make you happy.”

       After I was done, she prompted me. “So what about my name?”

       “Yeah, about that.”

       “Did you decide?”

       I looked her in the eyes. “I think so.”

       “So what’s the verdict?”

       “I’ve decided to call you Wendy.”

       She didn’t flinch or make a face, which pleased me. “That’s a nice name.”

       “I have a good reason for it, too.”

       “Yeah?”

       “Well, I don’t know if this is true, but I heard that it wasn’t really a ‘real’ name until the author of Peter Pan used it in his story. . . . ”

       “Yeah, I think it became popular after that.”

       “Riiight. So . . . it’s kind of like, it’s something that started as a story and came out into the world.” I smiled a little. “Like you, miss fairy.”

       “Haha! Yeah, I think it’s perfect.” She leaned close all of a sudden and kissed my cheek, with her arms around my neck even though I hadn’t seen her putting them there. “I knew you’d believe in me,” she whispered teasingly beside my ear.

       “Hey now, don’t assume that means I believe everything you said.” I tousled her wispy little bangs as she pouted. “I’m just sick of you getting pissed off when I say otherwise.”

       “Oh, whatever, you buttface. Now don’t you have any whipped cream for this hot chocolate?” She jiggled the mug by the handle. “I thought this stuff was supposed to have whipped cream.”

       “Sorry.”

       “And here I am without my wand,” she said sarcastically, then downed the rest of the cup. “I’ll do the dishes this time, since you cooked,” she said as she grabbed the other plates and went to the sink. She pulled her hair up in a sloppy ponytail and tied it with a rubber band that she must have pulled out of the ether (or more likely it had just been around her wrist and I’d never noticed), and then she quickly washed the dishes and stuck them in the dish rack, humming a pretty song in her delicate voice as she did it. I noticed she put every dish and piece of silverware exactly where I would have put it. That was weird.

       After she dried her hands and skipped back over to me, I found myself putting my hand on her waist sort of familiarly as I delivered a compliment. “I liked your song, you have a nice voice.”

       “Well, thanks. But I’m supposed to, after all.” She wriggled away from me and found her favorite spot back on my couch. “Ever hear of a tone-deaf fairy?”

       “Nah.” I had to admit that when I thought of fairies, I assumed they could sing. “What else are you good at?”

       “I guess we’ll find out together,” she said, looking shy but sincere.

       “I guess so.”

       From that point on the girl started making regular appearances in my life, just like she’d promised. Usually it was one of three ways: She’d suddenly be in my apartment when I woke up even if she hadn’t been when I’d gone to sleep, or she’d be waiting for me when I came home from work, or she’d just plain knock on the door and ask to be let in if I was home. Every once in a while it was something really weird, like I’d get out of the shower and she’d be sitting in a chair watching the door, or I’d be leaving in the morning and she’d be perched in a tree outside, or I’d run into her when I was somewhere else and she’d nonchalantly join me as if we’d planned it.

       She came around often. I’d usually see her most of the days of the week, sometimes as few as three days and occasionally seven days in a row, but she became a constant presence in my life. And I definitely liked having someone—it was a lot less lonely now that I had someone to bitch to about a bad day at work, or someone to eat with (even though she didn’t really eat anything), or just someone to keep me from thinking too much when I was feeling down on myself for some reason or another. But I got to thinking about whether I liked her, and I truly wasn’t sure.

       We weren’t romantic when we were together. We did a little fresh teasing here and there, but it was understood that we were being dirty without much intent. And we didn’t act like roommates or siblings—just like a weird sort of friends. We’d watch TV movies together and make fun of television commercials, or I’d show her stuff on the computer or ask her to help me with my laundry. But I sort of felt like even though I had a weird connection to her, there was just not a whole lot to this girl. Not a lot beyond what she’d supposedly copied from me and what she was claiming to be.

       I teased her often because her mock-anger was so cute, and the teasing cast a slightly mischievous feeling over a lot of our interaction. I teased her about everything; I’d noticed she had a hell of a generous spirit but in everyday practice she was actually pretty lazy. The girl took naps like cats do, so I started kidding her about coughing up hairballs and having fleas. And I’d noticed that as far as eating was concerned she only ever ate anything in front of me if it was sweet, so one day when I made myself dinner I served her a saucer full of sugar.

       She was good at turning the tables though. When I gave her the sugar, she asked for a spoon like this was normal. And she started making fun of the way I said her name. For some reason I tried to say “Wendy” and it kept coming out “Windy.” Maybe it was because her hair always looked like she’d been in a hurricane. I gave up on the name I’d chosen and just started calling her Windy or just Wind. She always called me Thomas, unless she was kidding me and called me “Doubting Thomas.” Because I did doubt her, often and vocally.

       It was because sometimes she really was weirdly magical, and it made me curious. That was when I was the most interested in her—the times when she seemed the most different from me. And it confused me because even though I’d heard of “opposites attract” I’d always noticed people usually formed bonds on common interests. But my common interests with her were boring, because she shared all of them, yet brought nothing new to the table. It was because she thought how I thought and believed how I believed and knew what I knew but never seemed to have pushed any of those things any farther. So whenever she did something that I truly didn’t understand, I felt intensely interested in her.

       There was a time when I had been craving mashed potatoes all day and when I got home from work she had a batch waiting for me. I was suitably impressed, but then I started feeling really weird when she also acted like she’d known I’d been craving them all day. Just like with my mom’s cookies. I mean, how could a person know something random you were feeling that you’d kept to yourself? And then there was the day when my sunglasses snapped in half when they were in my bag, and when I got home she’d somehow acquired a new pair for me—in a style I liked—and totally knew I’d broken them at work when seriously, no one had seen it happen. Whenever these things weirded me out beyond belief I’d demand to know how she did them, and she’d just grin and say “It’s magic!” . . . and then sort of turn away from me looking like she was disturbed at herself.

       The more she kept the secrets to her “magic” away from me, the more I was convinced there was a rational explanation, and sometimes it would make me mad. Especially when I thought I saw evidence that she was hiding something or lying. There was one time I had had a hard time at work because I’d done some heavy lifting and my shoulders were aching, and she offered to give me a backrub. I let her give me a dainty little massage, but when I offered to return the favor she just blinked and said, “That’s okay, my back doesn’t hurt.” For some reason I felt sure she’d said that because she didn’t want me running across the straps to her fake wings. It bothered me all over again when she refused my offer—why did she think she had to keep up the “fairy” thing for me, anyway? I felt like her whole pretending-to-be-magical thing was the one barrier between us—the one thing that kept us from becoming closer, even if I wasn’t sure that “closer” was what I wanted for us.

       One day we were in the middle of a conversation and it was time for me to go to work, so she walked with me so we could finish it. We chatted at the door for a few minutes and then she left, but she’d stayed long enough for one of my co-workers to see her, get an eyeful, and start ragging me about her.

       “Hey, Tom, who was that hot girl?”

       “Um.”

       “Um, what? That your girlfriend?”

       I looked up, watching her leave as she skipped down the sidewalk with her hair and her wings looking silver in the pale sunlight. “That’s Windy,” I murmured. “No, she’s not my girlfriend.”

       “Then I call dibs!” he said, half-seriously. But he was eyeing her too.

       I felt this weird flash of possessiveness. Other people weren’t allowed to look at her that way. I felt like threatening the guy’s life, but I settled for a glare. He noticed my reaction.

       “Whoa. Sorry, man. What, is she your sister or something?”

       I laughed, breaking the mood.

       “I mean, sorry,” he said, “but she is pretty hot.”

       “No. She’s not my sister.”

       “Okay then.” He gave me a weird look. “So what is it, you’re not dating her but you want to? Because if that’s the case, hey, it’s a free country. Next time she comes by, you hook me up, huh?”

       I wanted to say, like, Shut up, she’s mine. But it wasn’t like I wanted her that way necessarily. I guess that was when I first realized how I felt about her. I didn’t want anyone else to have her, and I didn’t think she was for anyone else the way she was for me. No one else would understand Windy.

       “Stay away from her,” I said simply, without sounding angry or macho, just trying to say it so he knew I meant it.

       The guy rolled his eyes and backed up a step, holding up both hands in defeat. “Okay, whatever. You can have her. She’s got a nice face and a nice ass, but I don’t really dig the bottle blonde thing anyway.”

       “She’s not a bottle blonde.” I’d assumed her almost-white hair was natural. It didn’t make sense in my opinion that someone who never wore a spot of makeup would take the trouble to bleach her hair.

       “So that’s her real hair.”

       “I guess so.” I didn’t honestly know what was real about Windy. Though I did think it was funny that he asked if her hair was fake and didn’t even mention her wings.

       “Well, good luck with her, dude—but if you want to protect her from assholes like me, you might want to make sure she gets dressed when she goes out.” He made a disgusted noise and waved his hand. “Get her some frickin’ clothes.”

       I realized he was right. I’d gotten so used to seeing her in her weird little towel dress that I hadn’t thought about how inappropriate it was for her to wear it in public.

       I ended up catching myself thinking about Windy all day. Usually she was sort of “out of sight out of mind,” but starting that day my thoughts kept catching on her. I realized that I wouldn’t have felt jealousy or possessiveness or whatever if I didn’t consider her something special—something mine, even though it also wasn’t like I wanted to own her. I’d always hated those guys who acted like their girls were decoration or living trophies, so I had trouble with that feeling of “she’s mine.” But I finally made my brain shut up by declaring it a feeling of “we’re ours.” Our relationship belonged to the two of us, and whatever it was it was special. Some random guy who wanted her body without knowing the other feelings I associated with her didn’t deserve to even touch her with his eyes.

       So on my way home from work I stopped at another store in the strip mall and bought her a pretty red dress. I hoped she’d be waiting for me when I got home. She was, and I quickly presented the gift and made her open it. She squealed.

       “Ooh, it’s so nice! Do you think I’ll look pretty in it?” She stood up holding it against her chest, blushing and brimming with a happy light.

       “I think you’d look pretty in anything—or nothing,” I teased.

       “Nasty.”

       “Why don’t you go try it on?”

       “Umm, well if I’m gonna do that it’ll need surgery first.”

       “Huh?” I thought maybe she was saying I got the wrong size. I knew I was no expert on female fashions, but I had pictured her in the dress and thought sure it would accentuate her graceful, willowy curves while not revealing too much up top. The sexier dresses I’d considered seemed designed for girls with more cleavage than Windy could offer, but this dress—at least in my head—was made for girls like her. She had that classic tapered waist, those small but perfect breasts, those narrow but feminine hips. As she held it up I could see that it should fit perfectly, so I didn’t know what she could be talking about.

       “I’ll have to make some alterations. . . . ”

       “For what?”

       “For what? Derrr.” And before I could say I was sure I’d seen it, her little wings opened up all by themselves and fluttered sort of sarcastically before folding back up again. I stood there feeling dazed for a second, wondering if my eyes were playing tricks on me, and also trying to figure out how I’d read her wing-flapping as “sarcastic” anyway. For her part, she seemed oblivious to my confusion and examined the back of her new dress.

       “Where’s your scissors?” she muttered, but then without waiting for my reply she opened the right drawer and took the scissors out. She was always doing stuff like that, asking the sorts of questions guests would ask but then acting like she’d already known the answer. More of her magic, I guess. Like wispy little plastic wings that somehow moved on their own without any strings or triggers I could see.

       “How’d you do that?” I asked, sitting down.

       “Hmm?” She’d just made a large gash in the back of the new dress and was looking between her handiwork and my face like that was what I was asking about.

       “How’d you do that? You just made your wings flap.” I must have looked really funny being that confused because she laughed and then tried to hide it.

       “Well, there’s no mystery there, Thomas, they flapped because I wanted them to. Did you think they were just decoration?”

       “I don’t know, I thought . . . I thought they were just plastic or something.”

       She was visibly surprised. “Plastic. You thought my wings were fake?”

       “Of course I did—I mean, I still do, except I don’t see how they did that. They don’t look real.”

       She blinked a few times. “How are ‘real’ wings supposed to look?”

       I couldn’t really imagine realistic wings on a human frame. They’d have to be impractically big to actually work, so I supposed my conception of a fairy actually had pretty ornamental wings. Like hers. “I guess I don’t know.”

       Now she looked angry. “You took all this trouble to dream me up this way and then you don’t even believe in what you see. Boy, some winner I ended up with.”

       “Hey. . . . ” My brain was still tumbling around in a cloud somewhere, but even through the fog I had a sense of being insulted.

       “Look, when you thought about fairies—before I got here—would you have ever imagined one that couldn’t unfold her wings? That’s just stupid, isn’t it?”

       “I guess. . . . ”

       “Well let me tell you what’s stupid. I think it’s annoying that you bothered to give me these wings and then they’re not even big enough to fly with. If you were going to give me wings that get in the way of wearing normal clothes, you could have at least made it so I could use them for something besides completing your fairy fantasy.”

       I had a fleeting thought: Even though I’d always imagined fairies having wings that seemed pretty small, they could always fly anyway in my imagination. But I didn’t feel like talking to her about that because she was pissing me off.

       “One of these days you’re going to have to stop blaming me for all the things you don’t like about yourself.” She stopped short, still holding the scissors in one hand. “I might have thought it out a little better if I’d known I was going to create a person with my stupid fantasies. But since I didn’t know, I just liked what I liked and thought what I thought. It’s your job to take it from there.”

       Her eyes blinked slowly, like she was thinking in slow motion. Then a smile appeared. “Does that mean you finally believe in me?”

       I didn’t really know what to say to that, but it was true that her casual fluttering and subsequent whining had made me feel different about her. It all seemed so strangely real to me now. “I . . . well I guess I have no choice.”

       She made a happy little chirping sound that could have been a laugh. “And to think with all the magic I did to convince you I was really a fairy, all along I just had to do this.” She whisked her wings open again, but this time it wasn’t nonchalant; she was obviously doing it so I could look. A shy look crept onto her face after a moment, and she shut her wings and finished giving rudimentary surgery to the dress.

       “Now I can put it on for you at least. I’ll do the fine stitching on it tomorrow so it doesn’t fray.” I thought sure she’d go in the bathroom or the other room to prepare for her fashion show, but maybe one of the fairy characteristics I’d dreamed up was having no modesty, because she wriggled out of her old dress right there in front of me. It interested me to see how different the process of undressing was for her because she had extra appendages. She slid her old garment off her head and arms first before dropping it off her wings at the end.

       Underneath everything she was just wearing perfect little bikini panties and a soft-looking white undershirt with a low rear cut that exposed her back. Well, either she was a real fairy or she’d superglued giant dragonfly wings to her back, because there weren’t any straps. I wasn’t surprised by that though—not at that point. A part of my mind was still coming up with ways a normal person could have rigged fake wings to move like hers had, but my soul wasn’t in it this time. I was thinking of those things because I had a scientific mind, not because I was thinking them up to apply them to her anymore. I’d finally managed to start believing in her as a fairy, and several different aspects of my being were reeling from it.

       Windy managed to do some gymnastics to get all her parts through the right holes, and then she stood in front of me with a little grin, spreading the skirt with her hands for effect. “What do you think?”

       I think you look like a dream come true, I thought. It really was the perfect dress, and for the perfect girl. Except for her tousled hair and lack of a crown, she looked so elegant she could have been royalty. My fairy princess, my mind whispered, and I almost laughed because I’d never seen a princess even though they were real, and yet here I was looking at a fairy. My eyes blurred.

       “Well?” she prompted with a pretty grin.

       “I think it’s sweet. You look sweet in it.”

       “Really?” She gave me a silly smile and turned around, looking over her shoulder. I winced.

       “The back’s all ragged-looking, though.”

       “Yeah, I know. When I stitch it and attack it with some Velcro it’ll look better.” She twirled once. “What do you think, will you take me dancing in this baby?”

       I swallowed, imagining the scene that would cause. “Um, well don’t you think people in a club might think it’s weird that you have wings coming out of the back of your dress?”

       She frowned. “I’ve been out in public plenty of times and nobody said anything about them.” She started to look confused. “If I’m the only person out there with wings, how come nobody’s commented on it?”

       “They probably thought what I thought. That you were some crackpot who was wearing a fairy costume.”

       “That’s what people are thinking about me?”

       “Maybe. I’m sure they’re not looking at you and thinking, ‘Wow, I just saw a person with wings.’ The assumption is that there are no people with wings, so you’re walking around for some reason or another wearing fake ones.”

       “So . . . so you’d be embarrassed to go dancing with me because everyone would think you were with a crackpot.”

       “No, it’s just that. . . . ” I swallowed again, harder this time. How could I fit a fairy into my real life? “Couldn’t you not cut holes in the next dress, and put them in underneath?”

       “No,” she said, sounding irritated.

       “Why?”

       “Because that would make me itch,” she said. “They’re kind of tickly when they get squished against me.”

       “That’s weird.”

       “Hey, it’s how you made me. Besides, my hair tickles me too, and that’s not ‘weird.’ I try not to let that get squished against me inside my clothes either.”

       “Well, whatever. You could probably wear a long sweater or a coat, like the first night I met you.”

       She started to look really upset, and ended up sitting on the floor on her knees with the pretty red skirt of the dress all splayed around her.

       “What’s wrong?”

       “I don’t know. I feel kinda funny.” Her narrow shoulders and slender arms took on a tensed look as she gripped the dress’s skirt in her fists.

       “Can you try to explain?”

       “Um, well . . . I’m just thinking how . . . when I’m with you it’s okay to be me, because part of me is magic and part of me is just you.”

       “Um, yeah.”

       “But if I’m out in the real world, I’m this weird person who nobody understands. I don’t make sense to anyone but you, so I’m like this freak girl with wings and messy hair.”

       I laughed quietly. I’d been thinking how no one else could understand her myself earlier that day.

       “You think it’s funny that I just realized I have to come to terms with being a freak of nature? Don’t laugh at me.”

       “Sorry,” I said, even though I wasn’t laughing at that.

       “I have a confession to make,” she said.

       “What is it?”

       “I’ve been . . . around.”

       “Around? What?”

       “Well, it used to be, when I left your house I just wasn’t anywhere until it was time to come back again. And now . . . lately when I’m not with you I’m still around.” She bit her lip. “I’ve gotten bored. I’ve sat around reading magazines or looking at the clouds or trying to make up a song, because I’m not used to still being anywhere when I’m not here for you.”

       “Well there has to be more to life for you than me,” I said sensibly.

       “That’s just it,” she said. “Until recently, there wasn’t.” Her eyes flicked toward the window, then down to her own hands now clasped in her lap. “But . . . I’ve started to feel like there isn’t anything for me to give you except some magic once in a while, and you always seemed to get so mad when I did it so I tried to figure out other ways to make you happy.” Finally she met my eyes. “I can’t make you happy unless there’s more to me than this.”

       “Well, then maybe we can just have you get out more. I can help you.”

       “You don’t understand,” she said, and she started crying. I didn’t know what to do, so I just sat there. She kept talking. “I don’t want to leave you, but staying with you keeps me from being able to explore the world.”

       “What do you mean by that?”

       “The world will change me if I start experiencing it through my own eyes. What if I change into something you don’t like?” She sniffed. Her wings rustled a little like they were trying to open but didn’t have the energy. “Me having wings actually helped you believe in me for real, but everywhere else they’re going to be something freaky. I like them because they’re part of what you wanted, and now I’m finally a fairy to you the way I wanted to be. But I don’t see how I can be the girl you want me to be at the same time, because I can’t be your perfect girl if I’m still trying to be your fairy, you know?”

       “Well. . . . ” I thought for a moment before I was able to go on. “I guess maybe you’ll have to do some of your magic for yourself.”

       “I don’t think I can do magic for myself.”

       “Well then, maybe I should just say ‘I wish for you to do magic for yourself,’ and then the fairy police won’t be able to stop you.”

       “That’s not what I mean. I’m thinking . . . I don’t think I can be both a fairy and a girl. But I don’t know why I think that. Why do I think that, Thomas?”

       “I should know?”

       “Yes.” She looked at me with red-rimmed eyes. “You should know, because you made up the definition for the blueprint of me.”

       I thought for a couple minutes and then came up with something.

       “Maybe it’s because a fairy is . . . always something distant, something mysterious.” I smiled. “Something a man can never catch or get close to. A fairy is unreachable. But you’re not unreachable, or you don’t want to be. So you can’t be both my idea of a fairy and my perfect girl, because by that definition you’d be someone I could never get, and what’s perfect about that?”

       She just kept looking at me. So I just let more words fall out of my mouth.

       “I think you can only . . . become something more if you try to change your definition by yourself.”

       “But how can I do that if I’m kind of . . . trapped by who you made me to be?”

       “If you feel trapped, it’s your own doing now,” I said, and kept talking over her protesting look. “It was a long time ago that you came out of the ether, and ever since then you’ve sure changed my conception of fairies. There’s no reason you can’t change if I can.”

       “But I’m different from you,” she grumbled.

       “If you want to change, stop making excuses.” I felt bad about how wounded she looked at that comment, but I needed to say this to her. “I’ve changed a lot from when I was born . . . and every time I had a hard time doing something you can bet I didn’t blame my mother for not letting me be born able to do it. Somewhere along the line everyone has to take responsibility for what they become.”

       “But. . . . ” She sniffed. “But I don’t know how to do things I wasn’t . . . ‘programmed’ to do, you know?”

       “You’re not a computer. There’s a part of you that wants to be different than you are, and computers can’t do that. If you want to change, there must be a part of you that can do it . . . so use that part.”

       “But . . . Thomas, I’m here for you. What if I start trying to change, and while I’m off being selfish I turn into something you don’t like and completely lose my purpose?”

       “Well, first of all it wouldn’t be being selfish—I want you to be more than you are too, since the way we are now I guess we can’t really get any closer. And secondly, I can’t promise you that I won’t change a little here and there too, so you better learn how to do it in case you need to keep up with me.”

       “But I’m afraid you won’t like me if I try,” she said. Her eyes were streaming again.

       “You’ve started too many of the last few sentences with ‘but,’ Windy.”

       “I’m sorry. But I am afraid of that, of you not liking me . . . it’s really scary. I can’t explain it.”

       “Well, we’ll just have to take the chance that it’ll happen,” I said softly, coming over to dry her tears with my thumbs. “Nothing can happen if you don’t take risks, so you just have to. But you have my permission to become anyone you want to be.”

       She made a hiccuppy noise and nodded, pulling herself together. I stood up to get her a tissue. And I swear I was only gone for a second, but when I came back with the box she was gone. I felt a bit eerie, thinking that was the closest she’d ever come to disappearing in front of me, whatever she’d done.

       I hoped she was planning to come back.

       The idea that she might not caused me to use one of the tissues myself.

       She made me wait a couple days before showing up again. While she was gone I did a lot of thinking. She kept returning to my mind even when I didn’t want to think about her, and I found myself realizing that she was going through something like this too: She was trying to get used to “being around more,” while I was trying to process her place in my life. We were starting to become more real to each other. The more she became a person independent of me, the more she haunted my mind.

       I kept kicking around all the magic I’d witnessed, going back and forth a few times trying to convince myself that it was real and then that it wasn’t. I finally decided that yes, Windy was real and she was a fairy and magic really existed, but then my brain didn’t know what to do with those realizations. What else was I wrong about? Was rational thought a joke? Should I start wishing really hard for a million dollars? Maybe it only worked on Christmas Eve. Oh, it was stupid some of the things I came up with during the time she left me by myself to gnaw on my impossible thoughts.

       When she returned, it was just another one of those usual days where she was waiting for me at my place when I got off work, wearing the same old white towel dress. Uncharacteristically, though, she was watching the television. In the past, it seemed like she had always been just waiting for me to get home, like a pet or something. She gave me her full attention when I came in, though, the TV show apparently forgotten.

       “Hey Thomas.” I couldn’t tell if it was supposed to be a greeting or an attention-getter. “Come here and talk to me after you change. I’ve been thinking.”

       “Okay.”

       I went into my closet and changed into my hang-around-the-house clothes, then ducked into the kitchen to grab a couple bottles of pop. When I sat down on the floor with her and put one in her hand she flicked the top off and chugged half of it immediately, like she was hoping there was something a little stronger in there than soda. That was weird too. Usually she seemed reluctant to put anything at all in her body, and I’d never seen her do it eagerly. I’d never bothered her about it because it wasn’t really my business, but now I wondered about it again, and about what had prompted the change.

       “I’m not happy like this,” she said immediately once her mouth was empty.

       “Like what?”

       “Being like I am. Being too magical to be real, and too real to be magical.”

       “Uh, okay.”

       “So what should I do?” she asked.

       “Uh . . . well what do you want to do?”

       “Thomas, please, I need you for this. I thought plenty but all I could come up with is that I want to be one way or the other, not this half and half bullshit.” She looked up. “Either I want to fly around and do magic where people can see it—pixy dust and walking-through-walls magic—or I just want to be a regular person and start learning about the world I’m part of.” She looked down and caught her breath, then said one more thing: “I need you to help me decide which one I’m going to be.”

       “Windy, that’s not up to me.” How could she expect me to decide her fate when it was her own life?

       “I knew you’d just shrug and cop out on me.” She turned away and wiped her face like she was crying.

       “That’s not fair,” I said. “Give me a second to explain . . . how I feel about you.”

       She turned back, wide-eyed and expectant.

       “Listen. I guess I didn’t know until recently . . . how much I’ve come to care about you. I want you to do whatever it is you have to do to stay here with me. But . . . that might take some work.”

       “What kinda work?” Her eyebrows raised in slight suspicion.

       “You’ve got to start being your own person, not just my little fairy assistant. Becoming who you are always takes work, ask any teenager.”

       “Okay. So that means you want me to . . . be human or something?”

       “Oh, not really. I like your magic too. It’s part of the Windy I know.”

       “But I’ve already said I need to either be magical or ordinary, I can’t do both anymore.”

       “I think you can. Listen, I wouldn’t dig any girl who calls herself ‘ordinary,’ any girl who wants to be something called ‘normal.’ I like you partly because you’re not like any other girl.”

       She blinked. “Really?”

       “Yes, of course. And I guess that means I’m not ordinary either, because what ordinary person thinks of fairies when he dreams up his perfect girl?” I put my hand on my chest, trying to seem as sincere as I felt. “I didn’t know that about myself. You taught me that I wanted more than what the normal world offered. So, somewhere, something heard me and sent me a girl with wings.”

       She smiled, but it looked painful, sort of.

       “So, anyway, you have to start building yourself . . . finding some ‘you’ that’s different from me. But keep your magic, I wouldn’t want you to lose it . . . you don’t need to change what you are, you just need to change how you handle it.” I scooted closer to her and took her hands, and she let me. “I can help if you let me, but I can’t do it all, any more than I can do magic. But if you let me help you do something like make cookies, I’d . . . be part of the magic. The same as you’re part of my reality.”

       Then I leaned in to kiss her. She let me do that too.

       There wasn’t anything special about it, except that it was with her. Nothing . . . I don’t know, magic happened, like visions or smelling roses or flashes of sparkly light. Just me kissing Windy. It was nice. But I couldn’t deny that something was missing from it. It was a beginning, not a completion.

       She pulled away first and met my eyes playfully before giving me a hug. And when she pulled away from that, she said, “Let me ask you a question.”

       “Okay.”

       “Um, earlier, when I cut up my new dress, we were talking about my wings. . . . ”

       “Uh-huh.”

       “Something was wrong there, when we talked about it.”

       “Sorry I said I thought they were fake. And sorry I thought it in the first place.”

       “That’s not it. I just . . . could tell there was something you weren’t saying. When I said you shouldn’t have given them to me if I wasn’t going to be able to fly. You thought something and didn’t say.”

       “Can you read my mind or something?” I remembered what I’d been thinking.

       “Sometimes.” She met my eyes in a challenge, almost like she was saying, “I dare you to tell me to stop.”

       “Okay, I guess I’ll deal with that. I have nothing to hide.”

       “Good. So what were you thinking about then?”

       “I was thinking how . . . when I think of fairies I always think they can fly, even though I imagine them with wings that would be too small to carry them. It never really seemed to me like they should have to obey the laws of physics if they were magical.”

       “Oh.” She looked perplexed.

       “Haven’t you tried to fly? You said you couldn’t.”

       “No I haven’t tried. Because I think like you. I know my wings are way too small for me to be able to fly.”

       “Well, now I have to return the favor . . . you said I was dumb to think you’d have wings but not be able to unfold them. Now I’m saying, holy crap, what kinda moron do you have to be to have wings and never try to fly?”

       She looked angry for a second, then embarrassed. “I guess.”

       “Well, let’s see you try it.” I knew she’d be able to do it if she tried.

       “No,” she said sullenly.

       “Why?”

       “’Cause I am gonna try, but not with you or anybody watching.” She met my eyes again. “It’s something I’ll do on my own.”

       “Oh, come on.”

       “That’s my final answer, Thomas.”

       “Fine.” I crossed my arms.

       “I . . . I think there are a few other things I want to try on my own too.”

       “Like what?”

       “Working on who I am. You know what? It’s sort of like my name.”

       “What about it?”

       “You gave it to me, the way you gave me myself. But even though it was totally appropriate, it . . . evolved. Because of how you said it and how I responded. I changed from Wendy to Windy.”

       “Yeah, I guess.”

       “I think maybe my next thing to do is . . . evolve from that. Become something—someone—different from Windy, but still derived from it, you know?” She smiled shakily. “Does that sound right?”

       “It does.”

       “So . . . I guess I’ll go . . . make a name for myself or something. Ha ha.”

       “Yeah.”

       She stood up.

       “What, you’re going right now?”

       She laughed. “Well, I won’t be disappearing forever right this minute, but I have some things to do . . . by myself.” Her eyes looked off into some mythical distance, focusing on something I obviously couldn’t see. “I might have to go away for a while.”

       “Well, I want you to know it’ll be okay if that’s what you have to do to get the job done.” Boy, that was a lot easier to say than it was to imagine. I knew it was the “right” thing to say, but only in theory; the idea of Windy actually going away anywhere for any extended length of time was hard to stomach, so I turned my mind away from it.

       “But if I do decide to leave for a while, I won’t leave without stopping by one more time so you can see me off.”

       “Okay. That’ll be good.”

       She smiled and touched my face, and then my eyes got a little fuzzy. My head clouded for a moment and then when the fog cleared Windy was gone. I guessed that was the closest she could get to doing it in front of me—she had to clog up my brain first. I supposed that was the best I’d get as far as getting to be witness to her magic. I only hoped that in some small way I could work some for her.

       Another two days went by and then she came to the door and knocked.

       I would have known that knock anywhere by then. She always used the same one, that insistent, pounding knock that sounded like a pushy salesman. But then I’d open the door and it would always be a smiling little Windy, ready to come in and share an evening of hanging out and goofing off. That day, the knock was the same, but she hadn’t brought the smile.

       She was missing something else too. Her wings were gone.

       “What happened?” I asked immediately.

       “I was on my own thinking,” she said, pushing past me and stalking into the apartment. I turned around and stared at the back of her as she walked in. I was hit by a dizzy three-way confusion: I was confused by the missing wings, but I was also confused by the fact that she was wearing jeans and a tee shirt instead of her towel dress, and on top of that I’d said “what happened?” meaning her wings and she’d acted like I was asking about why she’d been gone so long. She hadn’t read my mind.

       I hadn’t realized how used to that I’d gotten. I’d never really consciously noticed it, but Windy almost always knew what I was talking about. And this time she didn’t.

       “Where’d your wings go?” I persisted. She turned around and smiled a little, looking over her shoulder a little flirtatiously.

       “Oh. You like it?” She struck a pose.

       “No,” I said flatly.

       “Really? I kinda like looking more normal.”

       “I guess. But I didn’t want you to lose them.”

       “Don’t worry. I didn’t. I still have them with me.”

       “What do you mean?”

       “Check this out.” She beckoned me closer and motioned for me to look down the back of her shirt. Feeling weird, I peeked in, and saw that instead of the wings she’d had before, she just had what seemed to be a tiny tattoo of a dragonfly in the middle of her back.

       “I thought about getting rid of them completely when I didn’t want them, but I decided it would be nice to always keep a reminder,” she went on, stepping away once I’d had my look.

       “You changed your wings into a picture?”

       “Yeah. You were right, Thomas. Fairies can do some neat things. Even stuff I didn’t know about.”

       “Well, do me a favor and state it plain for old stupid here.”

       She laughed.

       “I learned to fly yesterday,” she said.

       I was silent, surprised, happy but still confused.

       “I have a lot of say-so in what my wings can do,” she went on, “so I tried to figure out what to do so I could fly, and it worked. They only had to get a little bigger to carry me easily, it’s not at all what I thought . . . but like you said, the laws of physics don’t really apply to me, or maybe they apply in a different way.”

       “So you flew. How was it?”

       “A little scary,” she admitted, “and fun, and weird. And it made me feel dumb for not trying it.” She gave me a half-serious glare. “That’s what I get for listening to the part of me that’s made from you.”

       “Sorry.”

       “So I tried to think even more outside the box and decided, hey, if I can get my wings to open bigger, I should be able to make them shrink too, or disappear, or change into something else. I came up with this wings tattoo thing instead of just not having them at all, because hey, I want the people I meet on my journey to know I’m a little bit special.”

       I figured they’d know that anyway just from looking at her cherubic face and experiencing her innocent-yet-sarcastic demeanor, but that wasn’t what I focused on. “Your journey?” I asked. The smile left her face.

       “Yeah. I decided I’m gonna go on one.”

       “What kind of journey and for how long?”

       “I’m not sure. That’s the answer to both questions.”

       “Well, okay . . . you know I want you to be happy. . . . ” I really did. So why did I feel so horribly lonely at the idea of her leaving?

       “Will you be okay without me?”

       I blinked, looked up from the ground at her. “Well, yeah. I was okay before you came, right?”

       “Well, that’s debatable.”

       “I was fine. I’m still fine. That doesn’t mean I won’t miss you.”

       “You must have been pretty lonely to dream me up out of nothing and give it enough power to make me real, Thomas. But however it happened, I think . . . that somewhere in your heart, you’re still lonely, even when I’m here.”

       “Yeah. Sort of.”

       “How did your mom die?”

       I swallowed and looked down. “Don’t you know?”

       “I might. I’m trying not to be in touch with the part of me that’s part of you, because I’m trying to get out of that habit. But I think it’d be better if you told me in your own words anyway.”

       I looked at her again, feeling tears standing in my eyes. I was thinking like, What’s this supposed to be about, anyway? I was upset about her leaving, and at the idea of missing her—my mom had nothing to do with it. But her gaze was steady and sincere, and whether or not she was playing a game she obviously wanted me to tell her what had happened to my mom.

       “She died in a car wreck,” I heard myself saying from far away. “She had a cold. She misread or misunderstood the directions on the box of medicine and didn’t realize it was that kind you take at night. She took a big adult dose of it and fell asleep behind the wheel, and if she ever woke up again it wasn’t for long because she ended up wrapped around a telephone pole.”

       Windy nodded and slung her arm around my neck in a half hug.

       “I never told anyone about it.”

       “Why not?”

       “Everyone I would have told were the people who knew before I did, and nobody asked any questions when I went on leave at work. ‘My mom died’ was enough.”

       “This is what I want,” she said in her half-whisper.

       “What?”

       “I want to be the person you tell things to. More than anything.”

       “Well that’s fine, because I can tell you anything.”

       “But before you never needed to. I want to fulfill a need for you above and beyond magic. I need to find out . . . which parts of life are better to do the good old human way.” She took her arm from around me and dabbed at my wet eyes with her fingers. “Sometimes it’s better if I don’t know everything you know, everything you want and need . . . because then we both get the experience of expressing that stuff to each other.”

       “Well, you never have any problems for me to listen to, except for the stuff that’s my fault anyway. Making you up in a way you’re unhappy with.”

       “I’m gonna go off and get me some problems, then,” she said jokingly. “And passions, too. I’m going to go find things to care about, things to hate, things that are mine and not yours that I can share or not. I’ll try to do what you say and continue to be a fairy, but whatever happens I’ve got to become real.”

       “Uh. Okay.”

       “One thing you . . . need to understand, though,” she said, looking nervous. “I—I’m going to be doing this seriously. I’m going to totally dive in. I’m always going to think of you and right now I’m doing this for me and for you. But if there’s a me that emerges and that me has different plans than I have now . . . you’re going to have to live with that.”

       “I’ll live with whatever happens.” I guessed I’d have to, so might as well pretend it was okay with me.

       “Stop being so agreeable, Thomas. I don’t think you mean that, but I’m not gonna call you on it. You probably wouldn’t like it if I sent you a postcard in a year and said ‘Hi Thomas, hope you’re doing well, I decided to become an artist in New York and I won’t be coming back again, so maybe I’ll see you next Christmas, love Windy,’ now would you?”

       “I guess that would kinda piss me off. And make me sad.”

       “Yes. But for me to do this so it has any meaning at all, I can’t go through with it always planning to end up back here. Going on an adventure loses its point if you know what the endpoint is.” She took a deep breath. “So I guess I’m saying . . . that here, now, as the Windy you know, I do intend to come back to you.” She met my eyes. “But I’m looking for a new name and a new me. The girl I become might not feel the same way, though I sincerely hope she still loves you no matter what.”

       “Are you saying you love me now?” I asked, because that sounded like a love confession.

       “I’m saying that as much as I am capable of loving, I love you. But I don’t know if I know what love is, so that might be pretty empty.”

       “Oh, come on, quit overanalyzing everything. You sound just like some asshole I know, I think his name’s Thomas.”

       “Sorry. I’ll try again.” She gave me a pinched smile. “I love you.”

       “And I believe that came straight from that supposed heart of yours . . . I guess I have to believe it’s there, even if I haven’t ever seen it.”

       “If I have to show it to you, you’re cleaning up the blood.”

       “Ugh.” I grimaced, then tried to surprise her by leaning forward and kissing her on the mouth. From her expression, the surprise attempt worked. I liked that I could surprise her. “I love you too. And we’ll see where that takes us.”

       She pulled away from me and scampered in her whirlwind way over to the bathroom. “I’ll be out in a minute,” she said. “I’m going to change my clothes for the trip.”

       I crossed my arms when she shut the door. “Sudden attack of modesty, huh?” I called.

       “What?”

       “You changed in front of me last time.”

       “One show only. After that you have to pay.”

       I shrugged. I guessed I shouldn’t be surprised if she did things a little differently here and there when I knew she was trying to change lots of things about herself.

       When she emerged she was wearing the red dress I’d given her, though of course I hadn’t seen her bring it in with her. The alterations she’d made to the back were modified so that they didn’t look sloppy, though it also looked strange that she had two obvious slits in it with nothing coming out of them. It still made me feel weird that her wings had been replaced by a two-dimensional tattoo.

       “Where’d you put your jeans?” I asked.

       “I shrunk them and stuck them in my ear.”

       “What?”

       “I’m just kidding, Thomas. They’re somewhere else, and when I want them to be here again, I’ll get them. Will you ever stop asking me ‘how’ when it comes to magic?”

       “I guess if you give me more chances, I’ll try to stop.”

       “Okay then.” She took a deep breath and went toward the door of the apartment. “I thought I could wear your present out, and have it be my first outfit of my new life, to connect it with my old one.”

       I couldn’t speak, because I wanted to say some not-very-nice things about not wanting to be part of her “old” life.

       “Don’t worry,” she said, apparently misreading my expression, “I’ll be okay.”

       I smiled through the lump in my throat, because I liked that she knew I’d be worried about her, and I liked that she was about to get on with the business of becoming more real to both of us.

       She took me by the hand and brought me outside with her. “I guess this is goodbye, or really see ya later,” she said. “‘Goodbye’ is way too final. But it’s true that I don’t know when I’ll see you again.”

       “If you get lonely at Christmas, I’ll have a couch for you,” I said.

       “Okay.”

       She gave me a hug—it wasn’t very tight or final, I think that was on purpose so it could feel casual—and then she turned around and let her wings come out. It’s hard to describe what I saw because it happened so quickly and looked so disturbingly natural even though I’d never seen anything like it. Her tattoo’s flat wings came out of nowhere and extended out of the slits in her dress, and before I knew it she was gone, flown away effortlessly like some visiting bird.

       I spent a few moments kneeling on the dirt wondering how I’d gotten down there, talking in my head to whatever power had sent Windy to me and thinking, Damn you for giving her to me. Now bring her back.

       I spent the rest of the year battling mixed feelings about her, and a lot of them were negative, which surprises me considering how much I cared about her. Sometimes I’d remember us hanging out together and think she couldn’t have been real, but I had a few physical reminders of her, like the sunglasses she’d gotten me and stuff like that. Besides, I didn’t think I was insane enough to have all kinds of memories of some girl who wasn’t real, even if I was batshit enough to believe in fairies.

       I thought badly of her for being selfish, even though I didn’t really think she was. I thought angry thoughts at her because she never wrote me or called, and honestly, how hard could that have been? But I knew why she didn’t. I was still sore around the hole she’d left in my self and my life, but it festered because I wouldn’t let it heal. Healing would mean I was ready to live without her, and I wasn’t.

       Then I started wondering why I loved her anyway. I couldn’t isolate anything about her that I liked besides her breathtaking beauty and the way she made me feel. Like I’d said the first night she’d come to me, she sometimes acted like a nagging housewife who insulted me and didn’t do housework. She was a slob, she was untidy—I’d never seen her brush her hair or take a shower—and damn, I liked her anyway.

       But then I thought that hey, she was certainly my type physically, and sure I felt right about her, but it wasn’t fair to either of us to try a relationship if she was some half-formed person who hadn’t had a chance to live until she was already mine. She deserved to be her own—or someone else’s of her choice—before settling down for me, didn’t she? It wouldn’t mean anything if she was created just to love me. It would mean she wasn’t a person with a free will at all.

       I wanted her to love me of her own free will. But I sure as hell wanted her to love me.

       Her being absent for months made me doubt that she felt the same.

       I went a little crazy when Christmas Eve came and went and she didn’t visit. I’d been so sure she would come that I felt betrayed when she didn’t. I’d even bought her a stupid present. I thought to myself, What kind of fairy are you if you can’t show up on the most magical day of the year? I was inconsolable when I woke up to sunshine in my eyes, not because there was a white-blonde head on my shoulder tickling me awake. Christmas morning, and I was alone.

       Then I thought, She wouldn’t have wanted to see me like this. I wondered how she was doing, who she was spending Christmas with, if she was dead or cold or hungry or something. Well, not hungry. Not Windy. I wondered if she’d started eating more regularly, or if she really needed to. Then I thought about being hungry, and how much I wished she was here to make Christmas cookies for me.

       Then it struck me. This vacation from me was supposedly for her to find herself, but what about me? It wasn’t like she was the only one of us who could possibly use some life experience, some changes in perspective. She was working on becoming real. Maybe I could do the reverse. I wasn’t a fairy, so it wasn’t like I could do magic, but maybe there was a kind of magic I could touch. Maybe I could figure out how to make those cookies.

       This time I had more of a clue than the last time I’d hopelessly searched the Internet for cookie recipes. I knew she’d put some unusual ingredient in there, and if I could remember what it was I could search for recipes and narrow the search results to only those with that ingredient. I didn’t remember anything except that it was some kind of vinegar, so I went to my cabinet to get its exact name.

       And there was the bottle of apple cider vinegar, with a note from Windy on it.

       I’ll copy it in here so I don’t have to attach it to this story for whoever reads it. And I’m using capital letters because that’s how she writes, in print about as messy as her hair always was.

       HA! I KNEW YOU’D LOOK HERE!

       HI THOMAS. I WAS THINKING YOU MIGHT WANT TO MAKE SOME CHRISTMAS COOKIES, SO I’M INCLUDING THE RECIPE HERE. I GUESS WHILE I’M GONE YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO MAKE YOUR OWN MAGIC, SO EVEN THOUGH I’M NOT THERE TO HELP, I WANTED YOU TO KNOW THAT I THINK YOU CAN DO IT, AND THAT WHEREVER I AM YOU CAN BET I’M THINKING ABOUT YOU ON CHRISTMAS.

       I GUESS I’LL SEE YOU SOON.

       LOVE,

       WINDY

       I can’t copy the cute little butterfly drawings she did all around her name but you get the idea.

       On the back was the recipe:

THOMAS’S MOM’S GREAT CHRISTMAS COOKIES: THE WINDY SPECIAL!

INGREDIENTS:
2 STICKS OF BUTTER, 2 CUPS OF SUGAR, 2 EGGS, 1 TEASPOON OF VANILLA EXTRACT, 3 ½ CUPS OF FLOUR, 2 TEASPOONS OF BAKING SODA, AND 1 TEASPOON OF APPLE CIDER VINEGAR.

IN A SMALL DISH, MIX TOGETHER THE SODA AND VINEGAR, AND THEN THROW ALL THE OTHER STUFF IN A BIG BOWL AND MIX IT TOGETHER. THEN WHEN IT IS ALL SQUISHED, ADD THE FOAMY STUFF IN, MIX IT, AND PUT IT IN THE FRIDGE FOR A LITTLE WHILE. THEN PREHEAT THE OVEN TO 350 AND ROLL OUT THE DOUGH AND CUT OUT THE COOKIES WITH CUTTERS OR A GLASS OR WHATEVER YOU WANT. BAKE THEM FOR LIKE FIVE MINUTES AND IF YOU WANT TO YOU CAN ADD ICING BUT YOU PROBABLY WON’T. EAT THEM LIKE A PIG AND MAKE SURE YOU SAVE SOME DOUGH TO EAT RAW. YUMMY.

       As you can imagine I bought some eggs and butter and stuff and made the cookies the best I could. I burned the first batch because I rolled the dough too thin, but after that I got smart, made thicker cookies, and got some edible ones. The recipe made a lot more than I expected, but I supposed it seemed like more if I had to cut them out myself.

       I wanted to be sentimental and say they tasted different because I’d made them alone through my own “magic,” but they didn’t. They were just like I remembered, just like Windy’s cookies had been indistinguishable from my mom’s. It was all the same magic that made these cookies. It was a magic anyone could do, a real-life magic.

       For some reason I started realizing that I’d never treated the girl like she was real. I never took her out to eat or took her to movies or went in public with her unless it was one of those times she’d showed up unexpectedly or walked me to work. I hadn’t told relatives or even e-mail acquaintances about her, or mentioned her at work except for to that guy who wanted to bone her, or gotten her anything for her nights at my apartment like a special pillow or some Windy-sized socks or pajamas. She never seemed to want or need those things, but why hadn’t I offered them to her?

       For a magical creature who’d apparently materialized out of nothing, she’d sure made a very real mark on my life. Why hadn’t I responded by being “real” for her?

       I spent the next year treating her like I would an absent girlfriend. I felt calmer, and less like she’d abandoned me. It was more like she’d gone off to college, except she was learning stuff that was more important, probably. I wrote letters to her when I was thinking about her, and when I dreamed about her I told her about it, and whenever I saw something in a store that I thought she’d like, I bought it and put it in a bag or a box with the date on it and an explanation. She’d have a hell of a Christmas when she came back.

       If she came back.

       Sometimes I’d hear the door in my sleep and think it was her. I’d scramble from my warm bed and open the door only to find that it was just some random outside noise. Just the wind, with no capital W.

       And that’s about where I am now.

       After going over and over my short time with her and realizing the details were getting fuzzy, I decided I should try to revisit the experience by writing it down, before I forgot what my journey toward loving her had been like. I didn’t want to forget the reality of her magic or the truth of her existence. It wasn’t that long ago that I was her so-called “doubting Thomas,” and I still remember how it felt to think that way—in fact, I still do think that way except that Windy exists as an extraordinary exception to laws I otherwise accept. No, not really an exception; I know that she has to fit inside the natural world somehow, that there is some wild explanation for how she does her magic. It’s just something I don’t understand. That or I’m nuts.

       So, for the last few months of this year, I’ve been slowly writing this story. I’m a really slow writer, actually not much of a writer at all, but I’ve really liked writing it, and writing about her. Maybe next I’ll write some story that isn’t true. But anyway, I guess what I’ll do is finish this up here, and put the story aside until I know how it ends. It’s mid-December as I write this, two years after Windy left, so the time I’ve been waiting for her to come back is actually longer than the time I spent with her. I’m hoping this year she brings her whole self instead of just leaving me some of her magic. I’m ready to see her again after spending a Christmas alone, and I’m ready to make a new start. When I find out how the ending goes I’ll attach it to the rest of this. Hopefully my ending will also be a beginning.

       Okay, since there’s more pages to the story, you probably guessed that Windy did come back. This is my second draft of this, because the first draft I just kind of wrote everything that happened so it looked like a shopping list and ignored how it looked, but I want the style of this thing to be told like the rest of it was, like a story, so I’ll piece it together like all the other stuff and take my time this time. Here goes nothing.

       There was still daylight left on Christmas Eve when I heard her knock. I’d been hoping and expecting she’d come back, but I’d thought she’d be more traditional and show up after dark like last time. Maybe barefoot with no pants on. Not this time.

       She looked different. The overall enchanting effect of seeing her was the same as ever, but the few small differences were glaringly obvious to someone who’d imagined her face thousands of times since she’d left. Her features were the same, but her ears had been pierced and were decorated with dangly crystal hearts. Her hair was mostly the same—messy and white-blonde—but it was shorter and more evenly cut, and there were streaks of pink in it. The lips she was stretching with a big smile were coated with a slight hint of lip gloss. And she was wearing winter boots and a stylish long black coat that was obviously cut for a female figure.

       “I’m back!” she said into my shoulder as she squeezed me hello.

       “I see that!” I pulled her inside and shut the door.

       “You look awesome,” I said as she removed her coat and hung it up. Her body looked about the same as always, but like the coat, her clothes were flattering, a simple white winter dress tailored to her subtle curves like a second skin. Her wings were absent, probably hiding in their secret tattoo under her dress. I couldn’t stop staring at her, wondering if I was hallucinating, caught up in how great she looked.

       “I know,” she said haughtily, then hugged me again.

       “Merry Christmas,” I said.

       “To you too.”

       “I have a couple presents for you whenever you’re ready. This year’s and last year’s.”

       “Oh, okay. I didn’t bring anything for you this time. I figured I’d be your present.”

       “Just like two years ago.”

       “Yeah! God, it’s really been two years, hasn’t it. You haven’t changed a bit.”

       I sobered a little. “Yes I have.”

       “I didn’t mean that. Of course you’ve changed, time does that. I just meant you look the same. I’ve changed a lot too.”

       “I figured as much, or you wouldn’t be back.”

       “Yeah.”

       “So . . . tell me all about it.”

       “Let’s do something with our hands while we talk. It’ll be easier than just staring at each other.”

       We settled on making some dinner. I wondered if she would eat it when it was done.

       “I went out west,” she said once we’d set ourselves up chopping vegetables and peeling potatoes. She launched into some incidentals—where she’d lived, what she’d done, magic she’d learned along the way. She talked about flying and getting into locked buildings so nonchalantly. It made me feel a little unsettled. I’d almost forgotten the weird sensation I got when I thought about Windy’s magic, the still-foreign idea that I was sitting around bullshitting with a person who could do impossible things. Apparently she liked visiting rooftops and getting into libraries after hours. She often slept in libraries, she said. Even though her fairy constitution didn’t seem to require any food for sustenance, for some reason she did need to sleep.

       Remembering that I’d liked her singing, she’d investigated ways to make use of her voice, and the only way she’d found to do so that didn’t require professional experience was to sing in a church choir. That made me feel a little funny because I’d never liked the church thing. I liked Christmas and Easter and stuff, but since my mom hadn’t been religious, the holidays had always been more about Santa and the Easter Bunny. Picturing Windy in a church was strange.

       “For a little while I dated a guy from the choir,” she said lightly, and I stopped her there.

       “Whoa, wait, you dated someone?”

       “Kind of,” she said, looking away.

       “Why’d you do that?”

       “Because he liked me, and I wanted to.”

       “Well, I didn’t date anyone while you were gone.”

       “But you could have. And anyway, you dated people before you met me. I think it’s only fair that I got some basis of comparison before I came back to you.”

       I felt a little warmer when she said that, because it sounded like she meant “come back to you” as in “I’m ready to date you now,” whatever that means.

       “So how did he compare to the likes of me?” I asked in a faked prissy accent so I wouldn’t sound too much like I cared about the answer.

       “He didn’t score well,” she said. “I was getting to feel pretty comfortable with him so one day I decided to tell him I was a fairy and see what he thought. He didn’t much like it.”

       “Hah, I bet.”

       “Yeah. At first he thought I was kidding, then that I was crazy, and then he bolted when I proved it.”

       I started feeling bad because some of that described how I’d treated her when I’d first met her.

       “But you didn’t bolt,” she assured me when I expressed that worry.

       “The next guy scored a little better,” she said haltingly.

       “Oh, great, there’s a next guy. Do you have a scorecard?”

       She rolled her eyes. “I only dated two guys. Sam was the last one, and the one I cared about the most.” She smiled a little wistfully. “We’re still going to be friends.”

       “Why’d you leave him?”

       “Because he isn’t you.”

       I didn’t have a good answer for that.

       “He treated me great,” she went on. “He was a little pompous when he showed me off to his friends, like ‘lookit what I caught!’ but other than that I liked being with him.” She smiled. “He made me feel beautiful. I guess I was kinda sucked in by that.”

       “Well, you are beautiful.”

       “That doesn’t count, because I already knew you thought so.”

       “Hey, my compliment should count for something. My appreciation for beauty like yours helped create you, you know.”

       She rolled her eyes. “Touché.” Then she giggled. “I didn’t mean you don’t make me feel beautiful too. I just mean that I wasn’t tailored to Sam’s standard of beauty or anything, so the fact that he appreciated it made me a little giddy.” Windy got up and pulled a sort of wallet out of her coat pocket—a wallet? Windy?—and flipped it open to some photos. “He wasn’t bad-looking himself.”

       She took out this Sam guy’s photo and showed it to me. I didn’t really want to look at it, but girls never understand these things. He was pretty smooth-looking, but to me he kind of looked like he was gay. I don’t know why. I turned the picture over on the table to stop him from looking at me, and noticed there was some writing on it.

       “Who’s ‘Lana’?” I asked, seeing who it was addressed to.

       “That’s what he called me,” she said. “It’s short for ‘Solana,’ that’s the name I used while I was out there.”

       “Where’d you get that from?”

       She grinned. “The library. I was looking at books with the history of names, and I found this one that means ‘Wind from the east.’ I figured that was me. It’s Latin, so it has some pretty old roots, like the ones I’ve been trying to grow.”

       “I see. Well, do you want me to start calling you that now, since it’s the new name you found on your journey?” I didn’t think “Solana” or “Lana” really fit her, but I figured I’d have to respect her wishes.

       “No thanks,” she said. “You can just keep calling me what you always called me. Actually that brings me to what I want to tell you that’s most important about my journey.”

       “Okay. I’m listening.”

       “Good. Um, see, I said I left Sam because he wasn’t you, right?”

       “Sure.”

       “For a long time I fought that. I fought wanting to return to you.”

       “Why?”

       “Because . . . I had a persistent belief that coming back here would just be succumbing to homesickness or ‘settling down’ or something. I thought I had to . . . keep doing new things to say I was progressing, you know?”

       “I guess.”

       “But sometimes . . . progress isn’t a straight line. It’s a circle.”

       “A circle?”

       “Yeah. And, I mean, I liked Sam. But you know, when he did things I liked I realized it was because they reminded me of you, and when he did things I didn’t like I found myself thinking, ‘Thomas never would have said that to me.’ I didn’t leave here to get away from you. I left here because everything with you was so easy, so being close to you stopped me from wanting to reach to find myself.”

       “I’m still listening,” I said as I went to the stove to put some potatoes in the water.

       “Sometimes progressing, finding out who you are, just makes you realize that you had part of it to begin with.” She sighed. “Part of me has always been you. I can’t escape that and I don’t want to. But now . . . I have some perspective and I can honestly say I’ve learned it for myself. That I really want to be with you. Out of choice, not because I don’t know anything else.”

       “Well-said,” I told her.

       “So . . . I decided to come home to you, and hope that you hadn’t changed so you didn’t want me anymore.”

       I grinned. “Far from it,” I said. “Remember, you’re supposed to be part of me too, so when you left I lost some of me.” I came back to the table and hugged her from behind, arms draped across her skinny shoulders. “I missed you like Adam must’ve missed his rib.”

       “Oh, god!” she said, with tears in her eyes.

       “What is it?”

       “I missed you too!” She wiggled around so she could throw her arms around my neck, and she kissed me sweetly. I don’t think I can explain how it was different from our last one, the one where I’d thought something was missing. All I can say is that there wasn’t anything missing from this one. I’m not going to try anymore.

       When my lips were finished kissing they started smiling, and I couldn’t stop because the reality had finally hit me and it was almost too good to be true. She was back, she still loved me, and now we could get started on finding out what the rest of our lives would be like tangled up in each other’s. I was ready for my “normal” life to become a little more magical because of her, but I was sure I could bring some magic to her life as well. Knowing that this was both a magical night and very real, it was no wonder that I couldn’t stop smiling—I still can’t, even as I write this.

       So we ate our dinner together, and she actually consumed some of it even though it wasn't sweets. She ate an obscenely small amount for a normal person, and she confessed the reason to me: “Well, I figured out I don’t really need to eat, but when I do eat, I have to go to the bathroom. Why waste good food by turning it into poopie?” I didn’t really see why she had to go and talk about taking a shit, but it was still an interesting little factoid to know about the girl—that in that respect she could choose whether to let her body behave like a human being. I encouraged her to waste good food once in a while if it meant getting to taste it. Food isn’t only about nourishment. She still has a lot to learn.

       I gave her all her presents tonight, and she seems to like most of them, especially the candy necklace. To make up for not buying me a present, she said she’d make me cookies, so she’s in there doing that while I’m typing this.

       I’m looking forward to finding out who we’ll become because of each other . . . and I have to admit I’m looking forward to finding out what other kinds of magic Windy can do. Her “tricks” up to this point might have been restricted to magicking up sunglasses and mashed potatoes, but maybe she can grant some bigger wishes for both of us. I can hardly believe that this magic—along with Windy herself—is about to become a regular part of my life! The thought is so big it won’t fit in my head yet. But it will. She will.

       I think she was wiser than she knew when she said that sometimes progress is in circles, because even though it sure didn’t end where it started, this story begins and ends with Christmas cookies. And that’s as fitting a conclusion as I can think of.

See related drawings: Sketch of Windy, Colorbar Windy Doodle, or Color Christmas doodle of Windy.
See the cookie recipe from the story: Dutch Holiday Cookies!

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